


Little White Lie

by thesearchforbluejello



Category: Whiskey Cavalier (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Friendship, Humor, I almost didn't pick this title because Starkid ruined my life, I started hearing Boy Toy on repeat as soon as I titled this, Rated T but has a couple instances of strong language and one failed attempt at it, Team as Family, also because it's wc there's, but anyway here we go, hello darkness my old friend I'm here to try and make you cry again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-02-29 17:40:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 18,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18783013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesearchforbluejello/pseuds/thesearchforbluejello
Summary: When Will's life is in danger, Frankie reacts.She tells him she's fine.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Here we all sit, waiting for news...  
> But anyway, this is the story prompted by rories, whose prompt I can't give away without spoilers. It's also the one I just described in the discord as "the one where Frankie and Will bitch at each other through the first half and Will cries through the second half." Enjoy.
> 
> Many thanks to tyrsenian for the absolutely wonderful beta.
> 
> The story is complete, I just don't know how to count, so you'll have a ? until it's fully posted.

“This is going so _well_ ,” Frankie snaps, ducking behind the wall. 

“I thought it started out just fine,” Will replies, swapping out the magazine in his pistol. 

“Mm, no” she says, firing back at the mercenaries who are sheltered behind the opposite wall. “It started out with you spending an hour _taking a bath_ , which is why we missed breakfast.”

“I bought you a scone,” he says. 

“You did. But that hardly makes up for missing a continental breakfast.”

“Fair.” Will leans out from the other side of the wall and fires three shots, one of which fells a mercenary. 

“If we stay here we’re going to get shot,” Frankie hisses, ducking down again as a bullet impacts frighteningly close to where her head had just been.

“You really need to lighten up today.”

“Okay, sure. We haven’t gotten shot _yet_. But we’re about to.”

“You’re so cranky,” Will says, shaking his head. One of the mercenaries leans out just far enough for Frankie to hit him with a well-placed shot.

She ducks behind the wall again, switching out her magazine. “Well they say breakfast is the most important meal of the day. And for _some reason_ I didn’t get to eat this morning,” she hisses, glaring at Will.

“I bought you a scone!” he says in disbelief. “Fine. Are you ready? Cover me.”

“Ready.”

Will runs out from behind the wall as Frankie fires on the last mercenary. The man breaks from cover just for a moment, aiming at Will; Frankie stands and drops him with two shots to his chest. 

“This was supposed to be covert,” she says as she joins Will. 

“Not anymore,” he says. “Hey Jai, are you having any luck with that satellite imaging? It would be really helpful if we could see the bad guys before they’re right on top of us.”

“I’m still working on it,” Jai says through the comms.

“Work faster,” Frankie says.

“Yes, Francesca, thank you; you’ve inspired me to do the impossible.”

Frankie rolls her eyes as Will shakes his head. 

“What is your _problem_ today,” Susan says and they know it’s directed at Jai.

“My problem is ineffective equipment and ineffective help,” he bites back.

“Hey man,” Standish says, “just because you’re frustrated doesn’t mean you should take it out on me.”

“If you’re going to keep arguing, put it on mute,” Will snaps. The audio abruptly cuts out. “Thank you.”

“Let’s go,” Frankie says.

The estate is massive, a large main house visible through the windows and several smaller outbuildings for staff and guests, including the one they’re standing in. They slip out the back door, into the sunlight, stowing their pistols out of sight.

“Next up,” Will says and they hurry towards the next house. Jai’s extensive research on the activity of the estate had shown no visitors in or out for the past few months so they know the house is likely empty. “Hey guys,” he says as Frankie picks the lock, “is this the last one?”

There’s a click as the comm is unmuted from the Hive and Susan says, “That’s the last one.”

“Great.”

The lock opens and Frankie steps inside. It’s dark, with sunlight only filtering through the curtains. They sweep room by room.

“There’s nothing here,” Frankie finally says.

“There has to be,” Susan says. 

“No Suze, there’s nothing here,” Will agrees. 

“It has to be in the main house,” Frankie says.

“Then we’re done here,” Will sighs. 

“Why? We can make it.”

“All of Milošević’s private security force knows we’re here now. We won't have time.”

“We need those plans,” Frankie snaps.

“We can’t get them if we’re dead!”

“I’m going,” she says, slipping out the door.

“Frankie,” Will snaps. “Frankie!”

“You guys need to get on the same page,” Susan says.

He catches up to her outside the house as she heads towards the main estate house. “I didn’t agree to this,” he growls.

“I didn’t ask you to. I’ll meet you at the rendezvous.”

“This is a terrible idea.”

“We need those plans,” she snaps. “Right now we have no idea where Milošević is planning to attack and no clue how to defuse the bomb when we find it.”

“Exactly!” They’re exposed in the middle of the open yard and Will keeps his voice low. “We need the plans, but first we need a better plan to get the plans!”

“We don’t have time to wait.”

“I don’t know, Will,” Susan says. “I think Frankie’s right. You’ve already been made; if there’s a chance to get the plans it’s now.” There’s tension in her voice and they know it’s because her advice could be directing both of them to their immediate deaths if Milošević’s men are waiting when they enter the house.

“Okay, fine; let’s go.” 

Frankie shoots him a dirty look as they duck into the shadows at the back of the house.

“You guys should head to the second floor,” Standish says. “When you reach the top of the stairwell near you’ll take a left and there’s gonna be a door on the right side, about halfway down. According to the most recent blueprints, that’s where Milošević’s office is. The plans should be on his hard drive.”

“Got it,” Frankie says. She picks the lock on the door and looks at Will as they both draw their pistols again to make sure he’s ready before she opens the unlocked door. She pushes it open and Will takes point.

The hallway is empty as they move toward the stairwell at the end, where the hall opens into an entryway with sunlight pouring from the large windows into pools collecting on the marble floor. 

They move out into the open just as one of the mercenaries wanders out of the opposite hallway. Will is already moving towards the stairs. Frankie doesn’t even have time to shout a warning before the man raises his weapon; she tackles Will instead as the man fires and rolls out of the fall to fire back at him. Only after the man hits the floor does she turn to Will. She puts a hand on his thigh as he sits up. “Are you okay?”

“Are you nuts?! You could’ve gotten us _both_ killed!” Frankie is taken aback by his anger and it shows on her face. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she snaps. “And you’re welcome.”

“Guys?” Susan prompts. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Will says. “We’re fine.”

They hurry up the stairs, following Standish’s directions to the aforementioned office. Frankie picks the lock and hopes it’s the right door.

It is.

Will pushes the door mostly shut behind them and stands guard, looking out into the hallway through the crack. Frankie sits down at the computer and digs the thumb drive out of her pocket as she begins searching the hard drive.

“Hurry up,” Will says.

“Thanks for the advice; I was planning on taking awhile to peruse the impressive collection of porn he’s got on here, but now I think I’ll skip that.”

Standish laughs through the comms. Someone must glare at him because he says a deflated, “Sorry,” a moment later. 

“Found it,” Frankie says. She downloads the entire hard drive, just to be sure there’s nothing embedded in any of the other files. As the progress bar creeps across the screen they hear men yelling down the hallway.

“Good, because I think we’re about to have company,” Will says quietly.

Frankie stands from the chair and the whole office tilts dangerously in her vision. She grabs the edge of the desk to steady herself. “Fuck,” she hisses in surprise at the unexpected pain.

“Yeah,” Will agrees in a whisper from where he’s looking out the door.

Frankie zips her jacket shut. The drive beeps the completion of the download and she yanks it from the port. “The download’s complete,” she says so the team will know. “Let’s go.”

Will pushes the door shut with a click and locks it. “We’re not getting out that way.” He moves toward the window, looking down. 

“Oh, no,” Frankie says. 

“Oh yes.” Will pushes the window open. “You go first; you’re smaller.”

“Great,” she says joylessly. He holds onto her jacket as she climbs out onto the narrow ledge below the window; she hooks an arm over the windowsill and holds onto him as best she can as he climbs out after her. She moves over to the drain pipe that’s bolted into the stone exterior of the house. “This is a great idea,” she mutters. The narrow fastenings around the pipe have just enough room where they meet the building for her to get the toe of her boot and step down it like a very awkwardly spaced ladder. “I don’t know if this is going to hold you,” she says.

“I’m lighter than I look.”

“I know for a _fact_ that that’s not true.”

“ _Wow_ ,” is all Will says.

He makes it down alright, though, and looks at her triumphantly. “Come on.”

They run across the open yard of the estate until they can take cover behind the row of hedges. They can hear men yelling by the front entrance of the house now. “Okay, time’s up,” Will says. They run through the garden, past the trees and shrubs, to the edge of the estate where they’ve parked. Will reaches the car first and throws himself into the driver’s seat. Frankie swings herself into the passenger’s seat, pulling the door shut in the same motion, and tries not to wince visibly at the impact. She hasn’t gotten a good look at the damage yet but it doesn’t hurt enough, even with the disguise of adrenaline, to be that bad. She’ll patch it up back at the hotel or have Will do it if it’s worse than she thinks.

“We’re on our way back to the hotel,” Will says to the team.

“Great!” Ray says. “Sorry I missed the action.”

Will rolls his eyes in an expression that clearly states, “I’m not.”

“As soon as you upload the data, we’ll start combing through it,” Jai says.

“Eta is forty minutes, unless we’re followed,” Frankie says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot of italics for a lot of sass.
> 
> And so we wait. ABC has me stressed.
> 
> I've never been this wound up about a renewal.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No news is almost worse than bad news. Hopefully it'll be worth the wait.
> 
> Anyway, here we go with chapter 2.

Frankie plugs the flash drive into the laptop and sets it to upload so Jai and Standish can access it from the Hive. 

“I’m going to take a shower,” she says, pulling out her earbud and placing it on the nightstand.

“Okay,” Will agrees. “Lunch after this? I’m starved.”

She glares at him as she grabs her bag. “I wonder why.”

He shakes his head and she shuts the door behind her. She runs the shower as she takes the med kit from her bag and sets it on the sink. She sheds her jacket and studies the bloodstain on her shirt, thankfully no bigger than her hand, before she peels it off. The motion of pulling it over her head is suddenly excruciating and she knows it’ll get worse as the adrenaline fades further. She lets her breath hiss out through her teeth, inaudible through the door and under the sound of the running shower. She wads her shirt up with the stain on the inside before she shoves it into one of the plastic bags she’s taken from the med kit. 

She’s definitely been shot, that she’s sure of. The bullet wound in her abdomen is pretty hard to mistake. It’s hardly bleeding, though, even with how much running they’d done. She’s not really sure when it happened, but she figures it had to have been when she’d tackled Will. She’d only noticed it after that.

She feels for the exit wound along her back and turns her back to the mirror to look for it when she feels nothing. “Mother _fucker_ ,” she mutters under her breath when she realizes there isn’t one. There’s no way in hell she’s about to dig a bullet out of herself unless absolutely necessary. She’s about to yell for Will when he knocks on the door.

“Hey,” he says through the wood, “we’re gonna have to move on Milošević.”

“I don’t get breakfast,” she says, “and now I don’t even get a shower.” She can almost feel Will roll his eyes. “Give me a second.”

“That’s all we’ve got.”

“Okay.”

She shuts the shower off and reaches for the med kid to rip open one of the alcohol pads. Taking a deep breath to steady herself, she wipes it over the wound to clean some of the blood away. The pain of the alcohol demolishes the last of the adrenaline that had been lingering in her system and she has to sit down on the closed lid of the toilet and rest her forehead on her knees. 

“Fucking _great_ ,” she says to herself when she can breathe again. She grabs a few gauze patches out of the medkit and some tape. She grits her teeth and wipes the blood away with a wince. She tapes the rest of the gauze in place and shoves all the bloody stuff into the plastic bag with her ruined shirt and seals it up. She looks around to make sure she hasn’t accidentally left any bloody fingerprints and makes sure there’s no blood under her fingernails for Will to notice.

“Frankie, hurry up.”

“Eat a snack; you’re getting hangry,” she snaps back.

“Fair,” he says. “But so are you.”

“I know!” She struggles to pull a shirt over her head.

She tosses her bag on the bed as she leaves the bathroom and puts her earbud back in. Will holds out a plastic container. “Emergency sandwich?” 

“Ugh.” She knows it’s been in his bag since yesterday. 

“I know, but.” He looks at it. “I’ll split it with you.”

“Fine,” she says, acquiescing. 

Will takes two of the halves out of the container and passes it over to her. She reaches in for one and Will taps the crust of his slice to hers. “Cheers.”

“Cheers,” she says drily. The sandwich is soggy but at least he’d bought ham with mustard instead of mayonnaise so it’s still edible. She takes a small bite with a grimace. “This is Standish-level disgusting.”

“Hey,” Standish protests over the comm.

“She’s not wrong,” Will agrees. 

“Okay,” Jai says, “anyway. We think we know where Milošević has planted the bomb and we don’t have time to wait for Europol to deal with this.”

“You guys, we have to move now,” Susan says.

“Okay,” Frankie says, looking at Will. “Where is it?”

******

They end up in a conference center in the heart of the city.

“This place is a maze,” Frankie hisses as they wander corridor after corridor of empty lecture halls and meeting rooms. She flexes her fingers; they started tingling a few hours ago and the numbness has crept up to her wrists.

“An enormous maze,” Will adds. “Can’t you guys zero us in a little bit better? It’s going to take us ages to figure out where it is.”

“Working on it,” Jai says.

“We’re trying to figure out who he’s targeting,” Susan says. “If we can figure out who it is, then we can narrow down where the bomb might be.”

“That would be helpful,” Frankie says. 

They turn down another hallway and Will looks at her with a furrow in his brow. “Are you feeling okay?”

“What do you mean? I’m fine.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but you don’t look so great right now.”

“Is there any other way to take that?” she says with a glare.

“Focus,” Susan warns. 

“Right,” Will says.

“Yes,” Frankie growls, glaring pointedly at Will.

They continue to wander, walking through the empty rooms and looking for any sign of recent activity or disturbance.

“Something’s up,” Will says to her after a dozen more rooms and several minutes of silence.

“Yeah, we’ve been here for four hours and haven’t found anything,” she grouses. She flexes her fingers. Her elbows are aching like her hands and there’s static clinging to her face like a cobweb.

“If you say so.”

“I do.”

“You guys I think we’ve got it,” Susan says. “There’s a lecture tonight by Canadian scientist Bruce McLaughlan-- he’s a chemical engineer and Standish just found evidence of payments to one of his bank accounts for consulting fees from one of Milošević’s shell corporations.”

“So he was working for Milošević,” Will says.

“Looks like,” Ray chimes in.

“Then Milošević is going to kill him for something his knows,” Standish says.

“Yeah,” Susan agrees.

“But… why go to all this effort? He should’ve just had him assassinated,” Jai points out. “There’s a reason for using a bomb. It’s more of… a statement.”

“Hey hey hey, check this out,” Standish says. “I’m running all of McLaughlan’s recent charges on his credit card; he took a cab from La Guardia to the Canadian Embassy in New York two weeks ago.”

“He was meeting someone,” Jai says.

“He ratted Milošević out,” Frankie says.

“His lecture is in hall three-fourteen,” Susan says. “It’s in two hours.”

“Will, let’s go.”

They’re on the first floor, having circled back down after finding nothing. As they rush up the stairs and reach the landing of the second floor, Frankie realizes that the static that’s been pressing against her face and creeping into her mouth to coat her tongue is now trilling in her ears like a bell ringing underwater.

They reach the third floor and Will shoves through the door into the hallway. 

“Three-fourteen,” Frankie says breathlessly, pointing down the hall where the sign directs. 

They rush down the hall and Will shoves the door open with his shoulder. Frankie clicks on her flashlight to find the lightswitch; the lights flick on to illuminate rows of seating leading down in steps to a podium that stands before a large white screen dominating the opposite wall.

“The podium?” they both say.

Will laughs. “Come on.”

“Wow,” Susan says. “You guys, that was scary cute.”

“I thought it was kind of weird,” Ray says.

Frankie and Will kneel and wrench off the front off the podium, very carefully pulling it away once it’s loose in case it’s wired. It’s not and Will puts it on the ground next to him.

“Okay,” he says. “We’ve got eyes on the bomb.”

“What does it look like?” Jai asks.

“It looks like a bomb, Jai.”

“Thank you. That’s very helpful,” Jai says. Frankie shakes her head. “Do you see the timer?”

“What does it look like?” Will asks.

“What does it look like?” Jai repeats. “It looks-- I don’t know, it looks like a timer.”

“Oh my god,” Susan says.

“Jai,” Frankie warns.

“There’s no, like, screen or anything,” Will says. 

“There’s just some wires going into a block on the top,” Frankie adds.

“That’s it,” Jai says. “I mean, probably.”

“Whoa man,” Standish says.

“Probably?” Ray repeats.

“ _Look_ ,” Jai snaps, “these blueprints are terrible, okay? I’m doing my best.” There’s a moment of silence over the comms before he mutters, “It’s like a kindergartner drew them.”

Frankie leans her head against the podium. “Jesus,” she sighs. “Jai, I know we have a couple hours before this is set to go off, but neither of us really enjoys sitting here on top of a fully armed weapon.”

“That’s the timer,” he says again, more confidently. “Pull it off, straight up, until it disconnects. _Don’t_ ,” he says as Will reaches for it, causing him to jump and jerk his hand back, “pull it so hard that the wires disconnect. It should just kind of, pop off.”

“Okay,” Will says. He pulls at the little box and it pops right off, just as Jai said. “Wow. Okay. That was way easier than I expected.”

“Good. Now, cut the…” he trails off.

Frankie’s ears are still ringing and for a moment she’s worried she missed the rest of what he said until Will raises his eyebrows. “Jai?”

“I’m reading, hold on. Serbian isn’t exactly easy.”

“Okay. No, it’s fine. I’ll just sit here. Holding this.” He looks at Frankie so she rolls her eyes. His eyes narrow a little and she knows he’s appraising her. She must be starting to look almost as bad as she feels, then.

“Will,” Susan chides.

“Cut the blue wire,” Jai finally says. “Wait-- the-- yeah, the blue one.”

“You’re sure?” Will asks.

“Yeah, I'm sure. It’s color coded.”

“Oh good,” Frankie says. “It’s color coded.” She pulls the knife out of her pocket and flicks the blade out. She looks at Will. “Ready?”

He takes a deep breath. “Ready.”

Frankie puts her hand over Will’s to grab the wire; she bends it over the knife and cuts through it in a single motion. Nothing happens. “Jai?” she asks.

“What? Did you do it?”

“Yeah, we did it. How do we know?”

“Well, you’re not dead, so it should be fine.”

Frankie rests her forehead on the podium again and shakes her head in exasperation.

“Ray is calling authorities over there to come dispose of it,” Susan says.

“Uh, problem,” Standish says.

“What?” Will asks, not sure who exactly Standish is talking to.

“I just got a hit on the security cams outside on some of Milošević’s guys. They’re on their way into the building. You guys need to get out.”

“We can’t just leave the bomb.”

“Local law enforcement is just a couple blocks away,” Ray says. “They’re going to shut down the hall and the… whatever it’s called-- I don’t remember-- their CIA is moving against Milošević. We’re done here. Plus they want us out so they can take the credit.”

“Of course they do,” Will says. “Fine.” He puts the front of the podium back on and hits it with a closed fist to force it back into place.

He stands and Frankie uses the podium to pull herself to her feet as he looks toward the door. 

“Standish, are we clear to leave?”

“Yeah, I'll guide you out. They don’t have enough manpower there to cover the exits, but they’re headed up to you.”

“Okay, time to go, then.”

Will takes the stairs two at a time but Frankie follows more slowly. The pain is a dull and barely noticeable pressure now but her head is foggy with a phantom weight and her body feels like it’s moving of its own accord.

“You’re going to want the furthest stairwell; continue down the hallway to your right, all the way down, then take another right.”

“Got it,” Will says. He shuts the light off behind them and hurries down the hall as Frankie struggles to keep up.

He slows to a walk as they reach the end of Standish’s directions. “Okay, right or left now?” 

“Left.”

Frankie follows him but she’s having a hard time catching her breath, all of a sudden, and the static that she’s been feeling in her face, in her hands, pressing into her mouth is getting worse. The white collecting at the edges of her vision is growing. She flexes her fingers. She’s not quite sure where the floor is as she puts her feet down and the white is impossible to blink away. The static is so strong she can almost taste it and the pressure in her ears is almost painful.

She’s going to collapse and she knows she’ll hurt herself if she can’t break the fall.

She tries to say Will’s name but she can’t open her mouth to get the syllable out so it sounds like a groan that catches in her throat instead. Everything goes white and she catches her fingers on Will’s jacket as she starts to fall and hopes he can catch her on the way down.

Will begins to turn to her as he hears the noise she makes, uncharacteristic and confused, and feels her grab the shoulder of his jacket. He barely has time to react before she’s falling, her knees buckling and sending her crumpling backwards toward the floor. He can’t stop her fall, not entirely, but he drops to his knees with her and manages to get his hands between her head and the floor. She still hits hard enough that he’s worried about a possible concussion as he slips his hands from between her head and the carpet. His knuckles are bloody with rug burn and he wipes them on his pants.

Her face is ashen and he presses his fingers to her pulse. It’s rapid, but steady. She’s taking quick, shallow breaths and he realizes she’s in shock. What he doesn’t understand is why. She’s been with him this whole time and hadn’t been hit in the firefight that morning, so there’s no reason for her to have collapsed. Fear twists cold and serpentine in his gut and he looks her over for any sign of injury. 

Her jacket shifted up when she fell and he notices a thin edge of dark stain creeping toward the pocket of her jeans; he pulls her jacket up a little further and sees the stain reaching up to her waistband. He unzips her jacket entirely and as he pulls it open he realizes that she’d lied to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love Jai's attitude a lot.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm just so heartbroken that I almost forgot to post this. But anyway. Have a chapter.

Frankie wakes to Will pressing his hand to her wound. She gasps out something that was supposed to have four syllables and be very offensive but she’s too disoriented for it to come out quite right. 

“Stop moving,” Will snaps.

“You,” she gasps, “stop… _touching_.”

“You’re bleeding,” he says.

“I know!” She tries to raise her head but it makes the hallway swim so she rests it on the floor again.

He gives her a dark look. “I know you know. Nice patch job you did. Would’ve been more effective if you’d taken the bullet out.”

“Didn’t have time,” she says dully.

“Sure, okay. Funny how that works though; the reason you didn’t have time is because you didn’t _tell_ me.”

“I knew it would distract you.”

“ _Distract me_?!” He’s so angry that his face is almost impassive and whatever Frankie expected when she finally told him, this wasn’t it.

“I would’ve told you when we were done.”

“Oh, well that’s much better,” he bites. He sits her up without warning, hand still pressed to the wound. Everything whites out again and it takes a slow moment before she comes to. Will has managed to get his body behind her and is supporting her neck with the hand not pressed to her abdomen. His hand is cool against her skin. “Is it a goal of yours to get shot in every European country?”

“Just this one and France,” she pants with a wince. “Maybe Norway, eventually.”

“You hate the cold.”

“Exactly, which is why I’m not planning to go to Norway any time soon.”

She feels him laugh behind her even if it isn’t audible. “I’m going to pull you up, okay?” He replaces his hand on her wound with her own and pulls her to her feet before she can agree.

Everything goes white, again, but Will keeps her moving forward even though she's doing little more than stumbling along beside him. 

Someone is speaking into the comms and she can't hear through the ringing in her ears that's somehow intensified, but she feels Will's voice in his chest as he answers. They stumble down three flights of stairs and out an emergency exit, into the street and the sunlight. They're parked less than a block away from the building and Will drags her to the car. He lets her arm slip off his shoulders and she opens the door and drops herself into the passenger seat. 

The relief of sitting down and not moving is almost immediate and she can blink some of the white away. 

“It's not that bad,” she says. 

Will gives her a look she's not sure how to unpack. “I don't want to talk about it.” He starts the car. “I mean, we're going to talk about it, just not right now. Let me deal with it first, and then we'll talk about it.”

“I'd rather we didn't.”

“Too bad.”

She leans her head back against the seat and closes her eyes as the scenery passes and worsens her dizziness. Will is silent beside her but she can feel how badly he wants to speak. 

The hotel isn't far and when he pulls into the parking garage she forces herself to get out of the car under her own power. He reaches out to support her but she holds a hand up. “It's a little suspicious,” she says, meaning for her to show up in the hotel needing to lean on her partner to walk, but she leaves it at that and trusts that he understands without her having to waste her energy explaining the rest. 

“Fine.”

She feels like she's moving through molasses but makes it through the garage and into the elevator without Will needing to grab her, even though he's irritatingly tense beside her like he's just waiting for her to fall. 

She has that pressure in her head and weighing against her face that she knows comes after passing out and is difficult to shake. The elevator is cool and the draft from the fans in the ceiling makes her shiver. 

“Cold?” Will asks.

“I'm fine.” 

A couple gets in the elevator with them on the next floor and Frankie crosses her arms across her chest. Will puts his hand on her lower back and she realizes how bad the white is starting to get again. He guides her out of the elevator before she's even realized they were on their floor. 

“Okay, almost there,” he says and she realizes that he's got an arm around her as he turns the key in the lock. She didn't even notice that they were at their door. He sits her on the bed. “Hold on.” He comes back a moment later as she's shedding her jacket and slips a folded towel beneath her as he pulls her legs up onto the bed. 

“No,” she says, or at least thinks she says. 

“We can't leave it in.”

“Yeah we can.” 

He looks at her like he's not sure she's joking. “Frankie. We can't take you to the hospital and we can't leave it in.”

“I know,” she sighs. 

Will disappears from sight and she turns her head to see him scrubbing his hands with water rushing in the sink. She listens to the sound and lets her eyes close. 

******

She's somewhere between semi-conscious and mostly-unconscious when Will comes out of the bathroom, drying his hands. He pulls her earbud out and puts it on the table. 

“Susan, talk to me. She's not looking good.”

“I don't know, Will, I'm not that kind of doctor.”

“I know. But I can't just show up with her in the ER, pretend we're tourists, and try to explain that she got shot randomly in the street and yet we waited almost eight hours to bring her in.”

Frankie rouses a little bit at the anger in his voice and blinks blearily at him before it sharpens into something more coherent. 

“Start by getting the bullet out, if you can. Then stop any blood loss. There should be some fever reducers in the med kit, too. We have the same training, Will. You can do this.”

“What?” Frankie says at the look he gives her. 

“Nothing. Let me take a look at this.” He pulls a pair of gloves on before rolling her shirt up and pulling the gauze away, dropping it into the trashcan near his foot. “You're right; it's not that bad.”

“Told you. I don't know why you're so mad.” She's still having a little bit of difficulty speaking as the numbness of shock continues to cling intangibly to her face like a cobweb. Even so, the dark look Will gives her lets her know she's speaking clearly enough. 

“Oh boy,” Susan says into the comms before Will hears a click and knows she's silenced the line from their end. 

“Maybe,” he says as calmly as he can, “because you waited eight hours to tell me that you were shot? Maybe because you should have told me as soon as it happened?”

“I didn't even notice it when it happened,” she says, rolling her eyes. 

“When did it happen?” 

“Not sure. On the estate.” He hums noncommittally. “What?” she snaps. 

“Nothing.” He puts a gloved hand on her abs to hold her still. “Ready?”

“Sure,” she says drily. 

He picks the medkit's small forceps up from where he'd placed them on the towel beside her and doesn't give her another warning before sticking them into the wound. 

She digs her heels into the bed and grabs at the hand he has pressed to her abs, wrapping her fingers around his wrist so tightly he thinks it'll bruise. 

“I know,” is all he says. 

She grits her teeth and stays mostly quiet as she pants but Will isn't sure if it's because they're in a hotel with very thin walls or because she knows the team is still on comms. 

“One cute scar wasn't enough for you?” he asks. 

She smiles, just a little, without looking at him. 

The most sound she makes as he digs for the bullet is a sharp groan that seems to escape against her will; her grip on his wrist slackens and he looks up to see her eyelids fluttering as she tries not to pass out. 

“It's okay,” he says, surprising himself with how gentle it is even though he's struggling to push his anger aside. She nods, or at least he thinks she does, but her grip on his wrist tightens again. He feels the end of the forceps touch the bullet and as soon as it does her grip loosens entirely and her hand is just resting on his. He looks up to see that she's unconscious but the lines of pain are still tight on her face so he knows she's not as deeply out as he'd like her to be for this. 

He has to press the forceps in just a little deeper to grab the bullet; the noise of absolute agony she makes is loud enough that Will’s sure the team can hear it through the comms. Frankie jerks awake, trying to grab at Will’s hand holding the forceps. 

“No, no, no, don’t move. Don’t move.” She makes a sound of confusion and protest and her hand bumps his. “Look at me,” he says. “Look at me.” She does. “Don’t move, okay? If you move I’m going to drop it.” 

“‘Kay,” she whispers. She looks at the blood all over his hand and her stomach and sees the forceps he’s still holding in the wound. She’s already ashen but she goes frighteningly pale and he can see the muscles in her neck tighten as she starts to panic. He knows she’d normally be calm about even something as traumatic as this but shock has its difficulties and this is one of them. She’s breathing hard and each breath starts to carry an edge of a whimper to it and he knows he has to get her attention.

“Just look at me.” She nods. He readjusts his grip on the forceps. “Keep looking at me.” He glances at her to make sure she is. “Hey,” he says and her gaze snaps back to him. “I’m nice to look at.” He gestures with his less bloody hand to his eyes. “Emerald,” he says. Her lips twitch just enough for him to know she almost smiled. He looks back at the forceps. “Jade. Kelly? Hunter.” He starts pulling the bullet out, slowly. “Chartreuse?”

“That’s,” she gasps, “yellow.”

“No, it’s green.”

“‘S not.”

“Yeah it is.” The bullet comes free and he presses a towel over the wound to stem the flow of blood that follows it. “I got it. Thank goodness, because thinking up synonyms for ‘green’ on the fly is surprisingly difficult.”

The comms click. “It’s all in one piece?” Susan asks.

“Yeah.” He drops it and the forceps on the towel beside Frankie. “How’re you doing?”

“Fine,” she says, but she’s blinking rapidly like she’s trying to focus. “Kinda shocky.”

Will frowns. “Kind of? I wouldn’t say kind of.”

“Didn’t lose that much blood,” she says. The fact that she’s almost hyperventilating undermines her point.

“No, that you actually didn’t. _Leaving the bullet in_ ,” he bites, “helped with that.”

“We had a job to do,” she growls.

“This never should’ve happened in the first place!” He can’t stop himself from yelling. “France was-- France wasn’t something you couldn’t have anticipated. But this-- this was--”

“What are you mad about; I saved your life!” She doesn’t have more more color than the white towels but she yells right back at him.

He realizes that she knows exactly when she’d been shot, even if she hadn’t been lying when she said she hadn’t noticed at first. “You could’ve died!”

“You would’ve!” She grimaces and turns her face away from him. He knows she’d storm off if he wasn’t currently pressing a towel to a profusely bleeding gunshot wound in her side.

“Hey guys,” Will says to the team, “we’re going to go radio silent for a little while. I’ll be in touch later.” He taps the screen of his phone to wake it up and mutes the comms from their end, leaving a bloody fingerprint on the screen.

“O--okay,” Ray says. 

“We’re going to talk about this,” Will says to Frankie.

“Why.”

“Because we need to.”

“No we don’t.”

“Yes, we do. I-- look, I appreciate that you saved my life. I do. I know you’ve got my back, and I _trust_ you to have my back.” She looks away. “But, I don’t necessarily want you throwing yourself in front of a bullet for me.”

“I didn’t. I just shoved you out of the way.”

“And got in the way in the process.”

“Not on purpose.”

“Weirdly enough, that’s my point.”

She narrows her eyes at him. “You just said--”

“Frankie. You didn’t think. You just acted. That’s dangerous.”

“Oh good. Here we go. More on my questionable decisions in the field.” She looks like she’s starting to struggle to stay conscious but somehow she’s still dredging up enough energy to argue with him.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Yeah it is.” She looks away again.

“I--” he sighs. This is veering suddenly too close to something raw and dangerous and Will has to stop himself from speaking until he collects his thoughts. “If I ask you something will you promise to tell me the truth?”

She looks at him with concern creasing her brow. “Absolutely _not_.”

He holds up the pinky of his less bloody hand. “Promise me.”

She glares at his finger like it’s a potentially dangerous weapon that she’s trying to evaluate. He holds it a little closer to her and she frowns and hooks her pinky with his. “Fine.”

“If you knew that saving my life would cost your your own, would you do it anyway?”

She studies him for a moment. Her brow creases a little further, a little differently as it shifts from concern to something pensive. He’s still got her pinky hooked with his and she doesn’t pull away. “I don’t know,” she says and he knows it’s honest. He just wishes he’d phrased the question a little differently. He looks back to the towel under his hand that’s now spotting through with blood. He tries to draw his hand away but she doesn’t release the grip of her finger around his. “You understand,” she says. It’s a statement and a question both.

“Yeah,” he says, “I do.” She nods like his answer has satisfied her and she lets him go, letting her hand come to rest beside her. He reaches for the medkit and pulls it closer. “Okay. You're not going to like this.”

“I know,” she says, resigned. 

He removes the towel and swaps it out for some gauze. She barely moves as he covers the wound and tapes a final square over it to hold it in place. 

“How are you doing?” he asks. “And don't lie.”

She glares at him. He closes the medkit up and sets it on the nightstand beside the bed. He starts cleaning up and looks expectantly at her when she doesn't respond. “Shocky,” she says. 

“You look it.”

“Thanks.” Her eyes are closed when he turns around. He takes a moment to study her. He can still see the pallor of shock blanching her face. 

“You should change out of those clothes,” he says. The blood has started to dry and he knows she can't be comfortable. 

“Need a few minutes,” she says. 

“Okay.” He settles on the other side of the bed and turns on the room's tv. He mutes it so it doesn't disturb her but he doesn't speak Serbian anyway so it's not much of a loss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have some ideas of a plotline that'll pick up after whatever happens in the finale, so I'm certainly not done writing for this fandom.
> 
> Please remember to be kind to each other and to everyone else. There are a lot of things we can't control, but that is something we can.


	4. Chapter 4

Frankie's not really sure what's going on when she wakes up. She's cold but she's hot and there's a weird feeling against her skin she can't identify. Her ears are ringing and there's a staticy sound loud around her. She tries to move but she's kind of numb and only succeeds in hooking an arm clumsily over the side of what she belatedly realizes is the tub. 

“Not yet,” Will says and as she feels his voice against her back she realizes he's sitting behind her. 

“Cold,” she says. 

“That's the point.” She squints up at the showerhead and realizes that the reason she's so cold is because she's sitting under a spray of cold water and it's anything but pleasant. She tightens her grip on the edge of the tub and he tightens his grip on her. “You can't get out yet.” 

“I'm confused,” she admits, pressing a numb hand against her face. She doesn't feel cold-numbed, though; she just feels exhausted and weighed down. 

“You got worse pretty fast. I couldn't wake you up. Your fever is higher and your blood pressure is really low.”

It's all coming back to her now. She leans her head back against his shoulder again. “Didn't bleed that much,” she says hazily. She'd lost blood, sure, but not enough to send her into a tailspin like this. The last time she'd been this sick it had been from losing so much blood in France and she'd ended up in the hospital for over a week then. 

“No,” Will says, “no you didn't. Warm shock mimics blood loss.” He says it almost casually. 

“You're mad,” she says, as though it needs to be pointed out. “I won't apologize.”

“I am mad. And of course you won't.”

“We already had this argument.” She's too tired to do this again.

“Milošević isn't in custody yet so we're going to have to leave as soon as you can stand.”

“What? Why?” She leans toward the edge of the tub, trying to look at him. His eyes are dark in the white light from the overhead fixture. 

“Because you're in septic shock and that's not something I can fix with a first aid kit and a positive attitude.”

“I feel fine.”

“No you don't.”

She shakes her head. “No I don't. But I don't feel like we need to make a break for it rather than staying here.”

“You're septic from a bullet you left in for eight hours because you didn't feel like telling me about it but you want to stay here. Okay. Sure.”

It’s hard to speak but she forces the words out anyway. “It wasn't that I didn't feel like telling you about it, it's that it was a secondary concern to the mission.”

“You could've at least let me take it out!” 

“If I had told you about it you would've worried and you wouldn't have been completely focused on the mission like you needed to be. Finding that bomb was our top priority and I needed you totally focused on that.”

“I’m not going to compromise the mission--”

“You lose your ability to be objective--”

“And you’re reckless!”

All the fight goes out of her at once when he says it. She leans against the side of the tub again and rests her face against her forearms. It feels like there’s an intangible pressure creating a barrier where her skin touches, like there’s magnetism repelling the contact.

“Frankie,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re right, though,” she says, turning her head so her temple is resting on her wrist, facing away from him. “It was reckless.” She listens to the water for a moment. “I’d do it again.”

“Thank you. For saving my life.”

“I already regret it.”

“I’m sure you do,” he says with a smile. He’s just as soaked as she is, his t shirt clinging to him. He’s at least wearing shorts, so he’s probably not quite as miserable as she is in her wet jeans. 

“I think this is the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to me,” she says.

Will readjusts himself a little behind her. “Really? I can think of plenty more embarrassing things than this.”

“Like being an Eagle Scout?”

“I’ll have you know that I looked very dashing in my uniform.” 

She chuckles tiredly at that. “Tell me something.”

“Something embarrassing?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh. Jeez. Well, when I was six, I was playing soccer and one of my teammates accidentally pulled my shorts down in the middle of a game, right in front of everyone.”

She smiles. “How does that even happen?”

“He tripped, and just kind of reached out to catch himself… but it was my pants he grabbed.” She smiles at him and he smiles back. He reaches over and shuts the water off. “Okay,” he says. He jostles her a bit as he climbs out of the tub but she stays where she is. He grabs one of the towels and hands it to her. She takes it and presses it to her face before drying off her arms. He retrieves her bag and sets it on the floor where it’s dry. “Think you can get changed?”

“Yeah.” She pushes herself to her feet and stands unsteadily in the tub; he reaches out and grips her by the elbows as she steps out. The light suddenly seems a little dimmer and the ringing in her ears comes back with a vengeance. “Need to sit down,” she mumbles. 

“Okay-- shit,” he says as she tries to sit down and ends up with one leg tangled beneath the other. He’s got a tight enough hold on her that he arrests her backward momentum before her head hits the floor. He puts the towel on the floor beneath her head and hooks one arm under her calves, the other just above her knees, and settles on his hip, holding her legs elevated. A long moment passes where she listens only to the ringing in her ears. As it starts to fade he says, “Better?”

“Yeah.”

“Your blood pressure is way too low.”

“I noticed,” she says faintly.

He lowers her legs back down. “Are you good here for a minute?”

“Yeah.”

She keeps her eyes closed and hears him pad away on the tiled floor until his steps are muted by the carpet. 

“You guys there?” He pauses. “Not good. I need you to find me somewhere to bring her, outside the city, and let them know we’re coming.” Another pause. “No, she can’t wait that long.” She sighs. “Warm shock only lasts so long; she’s going to get worse fast.” He pauses again and she can hear him moving around but isn't sure what he's doing. “No it's definitely septic. I thought it was just blood loss at first too, but it's just getting worse. No, Standish, blood loss doesn't give you discoloration in your legs,” he snaps. She tilts her head on the towel to try and see her feet. She hadn't even noticed, but if it's visible enough that he's snapping at Standish about it then he's right that she's going to need emergency medical care. “You're right,” he says. “I'm sorry. Yeah. Okay.” 

She watches him take his earbud out again. He walks back into the bathroom and puts his bag down. He smiles at her when he sees that she's watching him but she can see the tension beneath it and knows it's false. She turns onto her side and pushes herself up until she's sitting on the tile. 

“Can you get dressed?”

“Yeah.”

“I'm going to stay over here in case you need me, okay? I won't look, I promise.”

“I'm not shy,” she grouses. “And I'm fine; I don't need anything.” She doesn't know why she says it, considering he's stopped her from potentially injuring herself with a bad fall twice in the past twenty-four hours. It's reflex and it's out before she can think better of it. 

He doesn't comment. 

It's hard to peel her wet jeans off while sitting on the floor but she manages to and realizes that he was right; her legs are pale and mottled. If her blood pressure is really that low then it explains why she can't stand up. She pulls on yoga pants because if she's going to feel like complete shit she might as well be comfortable. 

“Are you done?” Will asks.

“Yeah. Can you grab the medkit?”

“Yeah, we'll have to change the--” he looks over at her and seems put off his step when he sees that she's sitting against the tub in her bra, pulling the soaked gauze away from her side. 

The wound doesn't look bad, but she knows the infection is much deeper. 

Will returns with the medkit and crouches in front of her. She reaches a hand out for the gauze but he ignores her, pressing it to the wound. She's surprised to find that she can barely feel the pressure of his hand. She leans her head back against the tub and lets him patch her up again. 

“I'm upset that you didn't tell me. I thought you trusted me enough to let me have your back,” he says. She’s watching him through half-lidded eyes and he looks up at her with all the earnestness in the world painted across his face.

It takes her a moment to catch up to the non sequitur. “I do.”

“You still didn't tell me.”

“I knew you'd worry.”

“Of course I'd worry! I'm worried now!”

“I don't like needing people,” she says and the admission comes more easily than she would have ever expected. 

“I know.” He presses his fingers along the tape.

“You're not so bad to have around though. Even if you annoy me.”

She feels a strange and unexpected relief at the quick smile he gives her. “You're not usually so bad yourself,” he says.

“I think that's the only time I've ever heard that,” she quips. 

“It's just because I'm nicer than most people, so I can actually put up with you.” She just humphs in response. “I’d really prefer it if you didn't keep things like this from me in the future though. It's hard to keep you around if you're trying to attract every bullet in Europe.”

“You can keep this one.” He laughs. “No, really.” She turns her head against the tub to look at him and her hair falls across her face. She closes her eyes. She's too tired to move it. “I took it for you, so you can have it. You give bullets as gifts; you might as well be given one too.” 

She opens her eyes at the feeling of his fingers brushing across her forehead, moving her hair out of her face. He's looking at her but she can't read his expression. There's worry, plain as sunlight on the surface, and maybe anger too, still sitting in the crease of his brow, but there's something in the interstices of those emotions that she can't identify. 

He helps her get her shirt over her head and pulls her jacket on as well.

He slips an arm around her waist and one under her knees and she wraps hers around his neck. She lets her head rest against his shoulder and closes her eyes. She's watched him deadlift enough in the gym to know he can easily pick her up without dropping her. 

The change in equilibrium makes her feel like she's lost her balance even though she's not standing. She presses her cheek to his shoulder as an anchor in the wave of disorientation. He lays her on the bed and she feels untethered; it's too soft beneath her and she feels like she’s sinking. She can't seem to open her eyes but she feels Will press the back of his hand to her cheek. 

He moves away and as she hears him speaking into the comms she tries to untangle the words. “Good,” he says with the sound of relief. “No, she's unconscious. The shower only took her fever down a little bit; her blood pressure came up enough for her to wake up but it didn't last long.” There's a long pause and she tries to remember who it is exactly that he's talking about. “I heard you the first time, Ray,” he snaps. “I don't care if Milošević has a hit out on us or not; she can't wait.” She hears him take a deep, controlled breath and then another. When he speaks again it’s carefully even. “If you don't find somewhere for us to go, then I'm going to find one myself. With or without your help, we're leaving.” She hears him zip up a bag, and then another. A light switch flips with a dull sound and she hears him move closer to her. “Thank you,” he says and it sounds like relief again. He’s moving around the room and she’s almost entirely unconscious when she feels him slip a shoe on her foot.

She mumbles something without opening her eyes.

“What?”

“‘M not wearing any socks,” she slurs.

“You’re not-- I know you’re not wearing any socks.”

“Then why’re you putting my shoes on.”

“You’re fine; you’re not going to be walking anywhere.”

“But my feet are cold.” 

He grabs her other foot. “Your feet are _freezing_ ,” he says.

“Jus’ said that.”

“I know.” He slips her other shoe on and she huffs as he ties them while still ignoring her previous complaint about her socks. “I’m gonna go put our stuff in the truck; I’ll be back for you in a minute.”

She wants to respond but can’t manage to say it aloud.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's be real, who _wouldn't_ watch him deadlift in the gym?


	5. Chapter 5

It’s two a.m. and Will’s been driving for almost three hours. They’d gotten caught in traffic leaving the city, even as late as it was, and it had cost them over an hour. 

“Standish, how much longer?” he snaps. 

“Another forty-five minutes.” It’s almost apologetic, the way he says it. Restrained and subdued.

Will grits his teeth and grips the steering wheel a little tighter. He can hardly see Frankie in the eerie red light of the truck’s dash displays; he’d tilted her seat back when he’d put her in the truck so she’d be more comfortable. It just barely casts enough illumination to collect in the curves of her face and allow him to read her expression. It had been discomfort awhile ago. Now she looks like she’s sleeping, undisturbed and relaxed. He knows she’s unconscious, not asleep.

“How is she?” Standish asks. They had this conversation half an hour ago. Will doesn’t want to answer.

“Not good.”

Just under the sound of the engine, if he listens hard enough, he can hear her breathe. She’d been struggling before, in the hotel, just a little bit as though she’d just gone for a run and come back winded. Now every breath seems difficult as she takes a short, hard inhale and lets it out as an exhale that sounds almost like a defeated sigh. He’d reached over a little while ago and pressed the backs of his fingers to her neck; her fever has faded and dropped below her normal body temperature, leaving her cool to the touch. It’s why they call this part cold shock, Will knows. He also knows that this is the part of sepsis that’ll kill her. 

“How close is the team?”

“A little over an hour,” Standish says. “They’ll make it there just after you.”

“Okay.”

Will’s glad he won’t be alone for long. He doesn’t want to be alone, pacing empty hospital corridors by himself when he waits for news. He pushes the image away and controls his breathing. He’s gotten too used to Frankie tempering him when he’s stressed. Even if she typically does so by deliberately pissing him off.

“I’m sorry that you had to stay,” he says to Standish.

“It’s okay, man. Someone had to stay here and keep combing through Milošević’s data. It’s a one-man job now; I wasn’t going to keep Jai here.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Will hears the shift of Frankie’s jacket against the seat. He glances over at her and is surprised to see her blinking awake. 

“She just woke up,” he says to Standish. “You okay?” he asks her.

She presses the heel of her hand to her ear. “Will?” she says.

“Yeah?”

“M’ ear’s ringin’.” She sounds like she’s drunk. Not that he’d know exactly what that sounded like; he’s never seen her drunk enough to sound quite like this.

“It’s because your blood pressure is really low,” he says. She makes a sound of protest and presses both hands against her ears again. “That won’t help; just leave it alone.”

She tries to shift in the seat but arrests the movement suddenly with a sound of pained surprise. “Ow,” she says a moment later.

“Yeah, ow,” he agrees.

“Wha’ happened?” she asks, or at least that’s what he assumes she says.

“You don’t remember?”

She relaxes against the seat again. “Nuh.”

“You got shot.”

“Huh.” She pauses so long he thinks she’s unconscious again before she says, “Y’okay?”

“Me? Yeah I’m fine.”

“Sure? Don’t sound good. Stressed.” She’s telling him she thinks he sounds stressed but he can hear the tinge of anxiety in her voice.

“No, I’m fine. It’s you I’m worried about.”

“Me?” she says. And then, “Yeah, me too.” It sounds resigned, exhausted. “I don’t want you to worry.” The words sound over pronounced, like she’s trying too hard to make them clear enough to be understood. “But I can’t really feel m’ hands.” The last word comes out on an exhale that’s edged sharp with panic like a sob that she’s caught and trapped tight in her chest to keep it from escaping.

He reaches over and grabs her hand, giving it a squeeze. It’s cold in his. “Can you feel that?”

“Yeah. A little.”

“Okay. Just focus on that.”

“Don’t let go?” It’s a question.

“I won’t.”

She’s silent for a long moment and Standish says nothing through the comms. “You’re a good friend to me,” she says. “Glad I didn’t kill you in France.”

“You really know how to flatter a guy,” he jokes but he feels like he’s the one who’s been shot.

“Yeah,” is her only reply and after a long moment Will realizes she’s unconscious again. She’s still got a grip on his hand, though, holding more tightly with her thumb and first finger and he knows it’s because the others are probably more numb.

“Shit,” Standish says when the silence grows and dominates the open line between them. “She’s in bad shape, man. She gave you an actual compliment.” It’s not a joke. Will can hear the fear in Standish’s voice.

“I know.”

******

He pulls into the hospital and parks the SUV in front of the ER entrance, out of the way of the ambulances but decidedly in the way of other traffic. He throws the door open and runs around the front of the truck to the passenger's side. He releases her seatbelt and disentangles it from her arm. She turns her head and he knows she’s at least semi-conscious.

“Will?” she says on an exhale.

“Yeah, I’m right here.”

“Don’t feel good.” Her words have no voice behind them, just breath shaped into the sounds of a whisper.

“Yeah, I know.” 

“Can’t breathe.”

“Stop talking, then,” he says. They’re harsh words but he wants her saving her breath for breathing, not talking to him.

“Will?”

“Yeah.”

“There’s letters. In my apartment. ‘M not sentimental. But you are.”

“You know me so well,” he says drily.

“I do.” He slips his arms under her knees and behind her shoulders, pulling her toward him. She makes no move to help. “Jus’ needed you to know.” She breathes for a moment. “In case Jai is too upset to go get them.”

“What?” She doesn’t answer as he pulls her from the truck. “You’re _not_ going to die,” he says. 

“Feels like it,” she breathes.

“You’re not allowed to,” he snaps.

“Glad you’re here.”

“Listen to me,” he snaps as he kicks the handicap button with the toe of his boot to open the doors. “You are not allowed to die. I need you watching my back.” She hums in response, a sound just barely audible. Fear is twisting serpentine in his chest, coiling and uncoiling, writhing and squeezing. “Frankie,” he snaps.

She doesn’t respond and as he steps into the waiting room a doctor looks up from where he’s leaned over the desk, looking at something. “Will Chase?” he asks.

“Yeah!”

“They told us you were coming. Bring her over here.” There’s two nurses standing in the hallway with a bed and Will lays her down on it. The doctor orders something in Serbian and they start wheeling her down the hallway. Will follows. The doctor pulls the stethoscope from his neck and listens to her heart, then presses his fingers to her wrist. He says something else in Serbian that Will doesn’t understand but he doesn’t like the way the doctor’s brow creases or the way his mouth tightens into a line.

“What,” he says.

“Tell me what happened,” the doctor says. “They only told me she was septic. I need to know more details.”

Will tries to balance his story. “She was shot. She collapsed from shock later; I thought it was just from blood loss, but she didn’t lose that much blood. She was out of breath and started a fever and I thought that was just from shock too, but then I couldn’t wake her up. I realized she had all the signs of warm shock, including the discoloration in her legs. I cooled her down in the shower and she woke up but it didn’t last long. That was the last time she was fully awake and lucid.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Almost four hours.”

“Okay, okay. Not that long. How long between when she was shot and when you removed the bullet?”

“What?”

“She’s septic. I am assuming it’s because of the bullet. I’m also assuming if you could identify sepsis that you knew enough to remove the bullet.” The doctor looks at him with an expression so piercing it makes Will uncomfortable.

“Eight hours.”

“You waited eight hours?”

“I didn’t know,” Will snaps.

“You didn’t know she was shot?”

“No,” he says stiffly. “She didn’t tell me.”

They turn a corner. Will studies Frankie’s face. She’s almost colorless against the blue sheets on the bed and her face, so often showing exactly what she’s thinking, is entirely expressionless.

“She didn’t tell you she was shot?” the doctor asks.

“No,” Will says tightly. “She didn’t want to worry me.”

The doctor laughs humorlessly. “What is that word in English? For strong women.”

“There’s so many,” Will says, still looking at her.

“There is a specific one. It…” He mimes something exploding.

“Firecracker,” Will says.

“Yes. Firecracker.” The nurses push the double doors open. “Does she have allergies to medicines?”

“No.”

“Okay. You have to stay here. Waiting room is down the hall. I’ll take good care of your firecracker,” he says over his shoulder as he’s already disappearing through the doors.

Will starts toward the waiting room but realizes he has to move his truck and turns the other way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We've got about five more chapters to go, so this marks our halfway point!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I fell asleep on my couch and woke up three minutes before tonight's episode, but here's a slightly tardy chapter!

Standish had the time almost exact. Will has been pacing the empty waiting room for half an hour, trying to shed the tension gripping his shoulders with phantom hands, the worry crackling in his fingers, the fear still writhing in his chest.

The door opens and Susan, Jai, and Ray pour into the room.

“How is she?” Susan says.

“I don’t know. They haven’t told me.”

“How did you let this happen,” Jai snaps.

“Jai!” Susan protests.

Will opens his mouth but Jai cuts in again before he can respond. “You were with her. You should have noticed. You should’ve known something was wrong.”

“I knew something was off, but--”

“You’re her partner,” Jai snaps, his tone as caustic as Will’s ever heard it. “You should have done something.”

“That’s not fair,” Ray says.

“If she dies,” Jai says, jabbing a finger at Will, “this is your fault.”

Will feels it like a knife to the chest. 

“Okay,” Susan says, steering Jai back toward the door, “we need to take a walk.” Jai shrugs her hands away with a sharp move of his shoulders but shoves the door open and steps out into the hallway anyway. Susan looks over her shoulder at Will as she follows.

“Buddy, you look like you need to sit down,” Ray says. He puts a hand on Will’s shoulder and presses gently to encourage him to sit.

“Don’t fucking touch me, Ray,” he snaps. Ray pulls his hand away but Will sits on the bench anyway. Ray settles next to him, an arm’s length away, obviously trying not to crowd him. Will appreciates that. 

Will scrubs his hands over his face. They’re shaking. He lets out a long breath, then another. 

“It’s okay, man,” Ray says. 

Will nods and in the long moment that follows the only sound is his watery breathing. He’s trying to hide the fact that he’s crying but as much as he might hate Ray, they know each other too well. The cushion of the bench shifts as Ray stands and then shifts again as Ray resettles, setting a box of tissues next to Will.

“It’s not your fault,” Ray says. “She should’ve told you.”

“Jai’s right, though, I knew something was off. I should’ve pressed her; if I’d gotten her to tell me sooner then I could’ve done something--”

“No,” Ray says, shaking his head. “She’s a big girl, Will. It was her mistake not to tell you.”

“Maybe she was right though. It would’ve distracted me.” He stops himself from saying anything more. This isn’t a conversation he wants to have with Ray.

“Look, man. She’s an absolute hellcat. I’m mildly terrified of her.” Will looks at him. “Okay, maybe I’m more than mildly terrified of her. My point is that no one is going to make her do something she doesn’t want to do. It was her choice not to tell you and it wasn’t something you could’ve stopped.”

“But I _should've_.”

“The important part was that you had her back when she needed it, right?” Will shakes his head. “I think she’ll be okay. She’s tougher than me, anyway, and I survived being shot.”

Will nods. “Thanks, Ray.”

“We’re a team,” Ray says simply. The honesty on his face tells Will that his words are genuine. Will nods again. 

Will stands from the bench. The stress is still eating at him, chewing at his skin. “I need to take a walk.”

Ray stands too. “Do you want company?”

“No. But thank you. I-- I appreciate it. I’ll be back in a minute.” 

He pushes his way out into the hallway. It feels cooler out here, a chill rising up from the tiled floor and settling down from the ceiling vents. Will breathes in the stiff air and tries to calm himself. He wanders aimlessly. The hospital is silent this early because no one should even be here. There had been people sitting in the ER but here, deeper in the building, he’s alone. 

“Will,” Susan says behind him. He turns and she steps up to hug him. He hadn’t expected her to find him.

She’s clearly looking to put out fires and Will knows she’ll ignore herself until she gets him and Jai both back on track. “Are you okay?” he asks. He can tell she’s been crying. 

“No,” she says honestly. “I know you’re not either.”

“I’m okay.” 

She leans back, studying his face. “No you’re not.”

“This isn’t the first time I’ve had a teammate end up in the hospital,” he says, a little stiffly.

“We’re family, Will,” she says. “I know you’re upset.”

“I’m upset because my partner lied to me and I should’ve noticed something was wrong sooner. I just had Ray-- of all people, Ray-- tell me it’s not my fault, but that’s not good enough.” The frustration and anger is rising again and he doesn’t tamp it down this time.

Susan studies him. “Are you upset because your partner lied to you, or your friend?” she says carefully.

“Don’t analyze me,” he snaps. 

“Will, you let yourself love so easily. Why do you have such a hard time with her?”

He shakes his head, stepping away from Susan and starting to pace. “I told her before that she doesn’t make me feel safe. Because she doesn’t, Susan. I know that I probably shouldn’t trust her with _anything_ , let alone my life. But I do. And I don’t know why and that bothers me.”

“I know how important trust is to you. So does Frankie. Just because she doesn’t tell you everything doesn’t mean you can’t trust her. Your relationship goes so much deeper than that; you must know that by now. If she’s not telling you something, there’s a reason, and it might be a flawed reason, but things are so much clearer in hindsight, Will. You know she’s never had a partner before, and I don’t think she’s had friends other than Jai for a very long time. You can’t expect her to trust in the same way that you do. It’s different for everyone, and the two of you just happen to be very different in that regard.”

“I know.”

She holds up a hand. “I know you’re worried about her; we all are.”

“I know.”

“Then tell me why this has you all bent out of shape. And I know it’s not just what Jai said; I’m sure you feel guilty about not having known something was that wrong but this?” She makes a vague gesture that encapsulates all of him. “This is more than that. You’re emotional but you’re also rational. You know she kept it well hidden, Will, and you know she was wrong to.”

He shakes his head. “She wasn’t.”

“What?”

“She wasn’t,” he says again. “She said I would’ve lost objectivity if she’d told me. That I wouldn’t have been as focused on Milošević and the bomb as I should’ve been. She was right, Susan.” He takes a long shaky breath and then lets it out. “She was right and it is my fault she kept it hidden.”

Her brow furrows. “What are you more worried about, that you couldn’t be objective, or that she knew it?”

“Both,” he says and the word is raw. Susan hugs him again. “She told me she thought she was dying,” he admits because he knows they hadn’t been on comms. The only other person who’d heard that would’ve been Standish, if he was listening. Susan runs a hand over his hair before she leans back a little from him, hands gripping his elbows. “She was bad, Suze. I’m afraid…” The words grow hungry roots and feed off his fear, lodging themselves there in his throat and choking him. The statement is apt enough on its own.

“I am too,” Susan says. “We all love her, Will. Blaming yourself for something that’s done isn’t going to help anything.”

“It doesn’t make it any easier not to.” He wipes at his eyes with his sleeve.

“I know.” She squeezes his arm.

“We should go back,” he says.

“Jai is going to apologize to you. He’s upset with Frankie, not you, but because he can’t take it out on her, he took it out on you.”

“I’m sure he’s upset with me, too.”

“Okay, maybe he is. But mostly with Frankie. He thinks she should’ve told you.”

“He’s not going to tell me that.”

“No, he’s not.”

Will nods. They walk the little ways back to the waiting room in silence.

When Will opens the door, Jai stands. He straightens his coat and lifts his chin.

“I apologize for blaming you,” he says.

“It’s okay,” Will says. He's a little thrown off; even if Susan had given him the heads up he hadn't quite expected Jai to apologize so quickly. “I know you’re just worried about her. So am I.”

Jai deflates a little. “Yeah.”

“We’re good,” Will says. Jai nods. Will looks around. “Where’s Ray?”

“Here I am!” Ray says as he pushes the door open. “I brought coffee! Well,” he looks at it in mild concern, “it was supposed to be coffee, but I think it’s more like burned bean-flavored water. But whatever, here it is!” He hands one to Jai and one to Will before handing Susan hers. She squints suspiciously at the specificity of the order. Ray just smiles.

They settle in to wait.

“Wow, that’s bad,” Will says, taking a sip of the coffee.

“It’s… horrid,” Jai agrees.

“Yeah, I’m not drinking that,” Susan says, setting hers down on the side table.

Ray just shrugs. Susan shakes her head as the guys make disgusted faces but continue to sip the coffee anyway.

“It almost gets worse with each sip,” Will says.

“It’s like the flavor actually changes,” Jai says.

Susan rolls her eyes.

******

Two hours pass and Will dozes off with his chin on his chest, legs splayed out before him. Jai has his chin in his palm, leaned against the side of the chair with his elbow on the arm. Susan can tell they’re both actually asleep.

“I can’t believe they’re asleep,” she whispers to Ray.

“I gave them decaf,” he whispers back. “I know how they get. The last thing they needed was caffeine.” Susan smiles despite herself at the kindness in that gesture.

The door opens and the smile is wiped off her face when the doctor steps in. Will is on his feet less than a breath later and the motion wakes Jai.

“Is she okay?” Jai asks.

The doctor doesn’t smile. “She is alive. She is not doing good but she is breathing by herself so I have hope. It will be time before we know.”

“Can we see her?” Will asks.

The doctor frowns. “Only family is--”

“We’re all family,” Ray says.

The doctor nods. “Follow me.”

The hallway is long and the dread grows in Will’s gut with every step, a heavy iron weight. Susan slips her hand into his.

“ _God_ ,” Jai chokes out when he sees her. Will squeezes Susan’s hand.

She looks just as bad as she had earlier, ashen against blue sheets. There’s a mask over her face to help her breathe but Will can still hear her struggling with hard inhales and weak, defeated exhales.

“We’re giving her antibiotics to fight the infection but I’m waiting on the rest of the blood works to see what it is she is fighting,” the doctor says. “The fluids and the insulin are helping her too. She is struggling but they will help.”

Will nods numbly.

“It will be time before we know,” the doctor says again. “She might be worse before she is better. She might be better before she is worse. I can’t know.”

“Thank you,” Ray says to the doctor because none of the rest of them can manage the words. 

“I will check in. I am here all night.” He pauses in the doorway. “I’m sorry-- I did not introduce myself. I’m Dr. Stojanović.”

Ray nods and the doctor nods in response as he leaves.

Jai sinks into the chair near the head of the bed. Will drags the other chair closer from where it was by the wall.

“I’ll go get another chair,” Susan says.

“Me too,” Ray says. 

Will looks across the bed at Jai. He looks back with his mouth pressed in a tight line. They both slip their hands in hers without speaking and settle in again to wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The crew's optimism on twitter is killing me. My cold heart almost has a shred of hope. We'll see where this goes, I guess.


	7. Chapter 7

Will wakes suddenly and blinks blearily at the clock. He’s been asleep for three hours but it feels like only a moment has passed. Jai’s asleep in the chair across from him. Susan is blinking drowsily beside him. He looks around for Ray.

“He went to find a hotel room for us,” Susan says.

“Okay.”

Will looks around, not sure why he woke so suddenly. Frankie’s fingers twitch against his palm and he scoots forward in his seat, studying her face. Her brow furrows and her fingers twitch again. Will runs a hand down her arm. Jai straightens up in his chair. There’s something tense in the room that Will can almost taste on the back of his tongue.

Frankie’s brow furrows again and she gasps a little. She squeezes Will’s hand and gasps again. He leans a hip on the bed, still gripping her hand. She gasps a third time and there’s an edge to it. Her eyes are squeezed shut tight. Will looks at Susan. “Get a nurse.”

Susan was already on her feet when he said it and she disappears through the door. 

Will smoothes a hand over Frankie’s hair. “It’s okay,” he says. “It’s okay.”

Jai is holding her other hand, rubbing his thumb gently across her knuckles. She’s gasping in shallow breaths like there’s a weight pressing down on her chest.

“Come on boo, just breathe,” Will mumbles. He strokes her hair as she struggles. “Just breathe.”

Stojanović rushes in with Susan and a nurse right behind him. He gives the nurse directions in Serbian as he presses his stethoscope to Frankie’s chest and watches the monitor beside her bed. Will ignores him and keeps moving his hand over her hair.

“What’s happening,” Jai snaps.

“Her blood pressure is still very low,” Stojanović says. “Her body is struggling to move blood, so her heart has been working very hard. She’s still not getting enough oxygen to her tissue; her body is trying but it is very tired. It may pass.”

“If it doesn’t?” Will asks.

“She might stop breathing on her own.”

“Jesus,” Susan says. She has both hands pressed over her mouth. Ray walks in the door and looks around. He looks from Jai, tense and silent; to Will sitting on the bed, ignoring everyone but Frankie; to Susan crying, trying not to panic. Ray reaches out and Susan leans against his chest. He wraps his arms around her and moves his hand in slow motions up and down her back.

“Just breathe,” Will whispers, like a mantra, like a prayer.

“We will wait through it,” the doctor says.

Will doesn’t move from where he’s perched on the edge of the bed. He waits with the patience of a sniper, holding desperation close to his chest and ignoring it entirely. He draws his thumb gently across her forehead, smoothes his hand over her hair again. Anything she might feel and find comfort in.

He doesn’t watch the clock.

Eventually, it seems to start coming more easily. The lines smooth away from her face and each breath loses the edge they had been sharpened with before. It takes time. Will doesn’t move. Jai shifts restlessly in his chair but never releases his grip on her hand. Susan sits down and Ray takes Will’s vacated chair. They wait.

Stojanović presses the stethoscope to her chest again and after a long moment says, “Good. Much better.”

Will looks at him. “She’s okay?”

He nods. “Still in the woods, or-- what that expression is. But she is better than she was just now.”

“What do we do?” Jai asks.

“We continue to wait. It might happen again. It might not. We have to hope the antibiotics are helping her body fight.”

Will wipes at his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt.

“Okay,” he says. “So we wait.”

******

“Will. Will, wake up.” He opens his eyes to Susan shaking his shoulder. 

“Mm-what?”

“Will, it’s ten a.m.. You should go shower. Get something to eat.”

“No, I’m okay.”

“Will,” she says, looking him in the eye, “you need to. You sitting in the tub with Frankie yesterday does not count as an actual shower.”

He sniffs his shirt. “I need to go shower,” he agrees. He looks at Frankie, whose hand is still in his.

“I’ll stay here,” she says. “Ray will be back in a minute with Jai, too. He’s volunteered to play taxi for us.” 

Will finally releases his grip on Frankie’s hand and stands from the chair, groaning as he eases the stiffness from his hips. 

“Maybe you should take a nap while you’re there,” Susan suggests.

“No. I’m good,” he says as he walks out of the room.

Susan leans back in her chair and looks at Frankie, shaking her head. “You’ve got your hands full with that one, girl.”

******

Will’s back in the hospital less than an hour later. 

“Did you eat?” Susan asks.

Will sits in his chair again. “I had a granola bar.”

“That’s not… Will. That’s not food. I mean, it’s food, but it’s not a meal.”

“I’m fine. Why don’t you go?”

“Okay,” she says. She knows it’s not an argument she’ll win. She puts a hand on his shoulder and smiles half-heartedly at Jai as she leaves.

“She looks better,” he says to Jai without looking away from Frankie's face. 

“She does.”

Will nods at the confirmation. He hadn't phrased it as a question, but the worry that it was wishful thinking had still clung to the statement. There's more color to her face than there had been this morning and Will realizes that her fingers aren't as pale as they'd been either. Worry is still bitter in his throat, though. 

“Did you know she wrote letters?” Will asks. Jai nods. “She told me.”

“She thought she was dying,” Jai says. It's not a question; it's an acknowledgement. 

“Yeah. I didn’t-- I was surprised when she told me.”

“She never did. Before. She… knew that I wouldn't need one. But I think she thought you would.” He pauses for a moment. “I think she left one for each of us.”

Silences stretches itself out between them for a moment like a drowsy cat. “This is a hard life,” Will says. 

“Yeah. But it's not always lonely,” Jai says. He doesn't look at Will. 

“No, not always.” He takes a deep breath. “I hope I never see that letter.”

“Me too. But if you do, I wouldn't… expect not to be insulted. At least a few times.”

Will laughs. “I think I know her better than that by now.” Jai smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We've still got at least four chapters... I think... maybe...


	8. Chapter 8

It's late afternoon when she gets worse.

Will has always been sensitive to his surroundings and he can feel something stiff in the air around them, intangible and unidentifiable but enough to make stress creep along his arms like carpenter ants building dread. Jai is out pacing the hallways and Ray and Susan have left to call Standish and bring dinner back. Will waits for the feeling to pass. It doesn’t. 

He leans forward in his chair, unable to ignore the anxiety that’s sizzling just over his skin. He’s studying Frankie’s face for any change so he sees it when she sighs.

He waits a long moment for her to inhale before he realizes she isn’t going to.

He lurches to his feet and a shout lodges in his throat as Stojanović rushes through the door. He studies the monitor for a moment and Will watches the unsteady peaks and valleys that trace the path of her heartbeat. 

She takes a shallow breath in and immediately sighs it out.

Two nurses run in and Will loses track of the words exchanged between them, only a handful of which he can begin to identify. He kneels on the tiled floor and grasps her hand in both of his. 

“Just breathe,” he begs. “Just breathe.”

Another shallow breath, a sip of air.

Will squeezes her hand. “Please,” he says. “Please. You can do it. Just breathe.”

She doesn’t.

“Wait in the hallway,” Stojanović says.

“I won’t leave her.”

“Go. You are in the way.” He’s filling a syringe with something Will can’t read. “Go.” 

Will stumbles to his feet and steps backward. Another nurse appears in the doorway and the doctor snaps something at her; she guides Will out of the room with a firm but gentle pressure on his arm and sits him down on the bench.

“Stay,” she says, pointing to the bench.

She disappears back into the room and shuts the door behind her. The curtain over the window drops a moment later and Will holds onto the voices he can’t understand on the other side of the door.

He rests his face in his hands and his elbows on his knees. Frankie’s not breathing and he can’t either.

Jai’s footsteps echo down the hall as he turns the corner at a run. “What happened?”

Will just shakes his head. He laces his fingers behind his head and tries to breathe. He’s panicking and he knows it. All he can think about is the fact that he’s out here and she’s alone, when the last thing she’d said to him was that she was glad he was with her. 

She was glad he was there and now he’s not. He’s left her alone.

This was his fault to begin with and now he’s left her alone.

He’s suffocating with guilt and it’s so hard to breathe that his training is kicking in, making him take deep breaths even though it hurts. It hurts like a bullet to the chest because he’s breathing and she’s not and it’s his fault.

Jai sits on the bench beside him and puts his arm awkwardly across Will’s shoulders. He squeezes Will’s arm and Will knows it’s part reassurance and part desperation.

She was right that they needed to separate personal and professional but they’ve done a pretty poor job of it. The fact that she may have surrendered her life as forfeit in place of his is so far beyond the border of professional that Will can’t even begin to wrap his hands around the meaning of it. Too many things are bubbling up that he’s been trying to keep buried deep and he’s terrified that he’s going to have to live with never having spoken his mind, live with having agreed to push away what could have been. They're somewhere in a liminality between friendship and something undefined and Will doesn't know how to operate this way, when everything's vague and indefinite but there's a frightening power concealed within.

He's never been under any illusions of what being a spy means; he knows he could lose any of them at any moment. He knows he could lose his own life at any moment. Some nights it’s a bitter medicine to swallow and nothing tempers the taste it leaves in his mouth, but when they're all sharing beers and laughing about stupid shit it's easier to ignore. 

Sometimes, in times like this, it comes back at him like a tidal wave, saccharine and sticky-sweet until he drowns on the knowledge that he'll never have those good times again. He's never wished to give up the good moments, though. He's learned to be grateful for whatever good he gets in this life because there's never enough of it. 

Right now he wishes he didn't know her. 

It makes him feel even guiltier. 

“What happened?!” It’s Susan; she caught sight of them as soon as they turned the corner. She rushes towards them and Ray follows with the bag of food in hand.

Will chokes on a sob but doesn’t look up. Jai shakes his head.

“Is she alive?” Susan asks, voice breaking.

“I don’t know,” Will chokes out.

Susan sits next to him and reaches out to wrap her arm around him; Will stands and walks down the hallway, away from her, away from Jai, and away from Ray. He lets the comfort of motion help him try to catch his breath.

He paces and they say nothing.

He paces because he’s about to lose it. 

His footsteps count the minutes in a staccato beat against the tile until he’s worn a hollow in his chest deep enough to let him sit. He settles back in the space between Jai and Susan. Neither of them speak; Susan doesn’t reach out to him. He knows she must be reading the stress telegraphed through his body language, the anticipated grief.

The silence is marked only by the voices behind the door and Will listens to the dull beat of his own heart in his ears.

There’s no clock on the wall of this purgatory hall and Will waits without patience. He doesn’t look at his watch.

At one point Susan squeezes his knee, just for a moment. It’s the most contact he can bear and he trusts that she knows that.

The door opens and Stojanović steps out. They’re all on their feet before he can even take a step forward. 

“She is not good,” he says. Will doesn’t breathe. “I cannot tell you if she will live the night.” 

Will has to put his hands on his knees. Susan wraps an arm around his back and grips his jacket at his side; she grasps his elbow with her other hand like she isn’t sure if he’ll fall. He isn’t either.

“Her heart was faltering but it is okay again, for now. I don’t know how long that will last. Her blood pressure has come up but it is still low and her heart is still struggling. If it stops we can keep her alive, but it may be too late, then.”

“No,” Jai says, shaking his head. “She has a living will.”

Stojanović nods. “Okay. Does she have a, you call, DNR?

“Yes.”

“Okay.” Stojanović looks sad, a weariness heavy on his face. “You should wait with her.”

Jai nods numbly and it takes pressure from Susan to get Will moving forward. He has to drag his chair back to the place it had been before. Susan settles beside him with her chair against his, holding the hand he hadn’t slipped into Frankie’s the moment he sat down and running her fingers through his hair to calm him.

“I’m going to call Standish,” Ray says softly before stepping back out into the hallway.

Jai grips her hand in his very slowly, as though he’s not sure if he should. He whispers something almost lost to the gentle hum of equipment around them and the static of air moving through the vents. Will can read the shape of the words on his lips, though, imploring, “Come on, Francesca.”

Will lets himself cry. His head aches with a pressure that’s pushing against his forehead, but Susan’s fingers in his hair ease the pain just a little. Nothing in the world, though, will ease the painful weight that’s settled into all the cavities of his chest like molten metal that’s cooled to form. It’s fear and dread and hopelessness and Will can taste it sharp and bitter on the roof of his mouth.

Ray comes back a lifetime later and sits in his chair. “Standish sends his love and said…” he swallows hard, “said for me to tell Frankie that if she comes home she can beat him up all she wants.”

Jai laughs.

Will and Susan both look up in surprise. Jai wipes a hand across his eyes and shakes his head.

Will wants to be anywhere but here in this small room. The air is pressing in on him with a phantom weight and he feels like his skin doesn’t fit quite right, too tight.

He’s not going anywhere.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When rories gave me this prompt, I didn't expect this angst fest.


	9. Chapter 9

The night drags on slower than Will could have anticipated, every moment multiplied a hundredfold by dread. 

“Will,” Jai whispers when it’s just past midnight.

Will looks up. Susan and Ray are both asleep beside him, Susan curled in her chair and Ray half slumped out of his.

“Before… all of this,” he says, gesturing in a vague encapsulation of their team, “she told me that if, if she died, then her death would mean nothing. I know I blamed you, but, if she dies, then, her death will mean something. To all of us. We can’t… we can’t ask for more than to be able to save someone we love. I’d give up my life to save hers, but I can’t. She was lucky enough to get that chance.”

Will nods. He’s crying again. The headache is back. “I wish our positions had been reversed,” he says.

Jai nods.

******

Stojanović stops by every hour but it’s three a.m. when he looks at Will and smiles. “Your firecracker is a fighter,” he whispers so he doesn’t disturb the others, all three of whom are dozing uncomfortably in their chairs.

“She is.”

“This is a good family,” he says, gesturing to the team.

Will smiles, despite himself, despite everything.

“I know.”

“We must have patience,” he says. “Well, I do have patients, I’m a doctor. The other patience. English is weird.”

Will smiles again and Stojanović winks at him as he leaves.

******

It's eight o'clock the following morning and Will's getting tired of sitting. He's stiff and sore and he wants nothing better than to go for a run and clear his head but he's not about to leave. Jai is still in the chair across from him, working on some of the intel they'd collected from Milošević's hard drive. Will is trying to ignore the tapping of his fingers on the tablet's screen. 

He'd wandered the halls a bit earlier, pacing aimlessly, never straying far. He'd found some magazines abandoned carelessly on a table in the hallway, left lying haphazardly with folded corners. He can't read Serbian anyway, so the discovery was unhelpful. He'd straightened them up as he passed. 

He's considering taking another walk when Frankie stirs on the bed, shifting the topography of the blankets, altering the folds that have been sitting undisturbed since yesterday. 

She blinks awake, squinting at the bright ceiling lights.

“Hey you,” Will says with a smile that feels like relief. Jai slides forward in his seat and catches Frankie’s hand.

She turns her head to look at Will but her brow is furrowed in confusion.

“Do you know where you are?” he asks.

Her lips make the shape of “no” behind the mask.

Susan smacks Ray in the chest to wake him up.

“You’re in the hospital. You’re going to be _fine_.”

“You were shot,” Jai says. “Do you remember?”

She looks at Jai on her opposite side. “No,” she whispers and this time there’s a little bit of breath behind it.

“That’s okay,” Will says.

She looks at him again and squints. “Stop crying,” she whispers. He knows she would have snapped it if she had the breath.

“Not a chance,” he laughs. She pulls her hand from his and tries to reach up to the mask. He catches her hand again. “Don’t touch that; it’s helping you breathe.” She tries to jerk her hand free of his grip but she’s so weak that it’s entirely ineffective. “Hey, it’s okay.” She draws in a shaky breath and he knows she’s starting to panic. 

“We’re here with you,” Jai says.

Will leans a hip on the bed, facing her. He wipes a tear away from her face with his thumb and then another with the backs of his fingers. She’s confused and terrified and he knows the drugs are making it hard for her to control it. “You’re okay,” he says. “Just go back to sleep.” He runs his hand over her hair.

“We’ll be here when you wake up,” Jai says. She turns her head on the pillow to look at him and he smiles.

Will keeps stroking her hair and she closes her eyes. He can’t tell if it’s because they’ve actually managed to comfort her or if it’s because she’s too exhausted to keep them open any longer.

******

She wakes a few more times, every couple of hours. She says nothing to them, just listens to Jai or Will or Susan talk as they explain again and again that she’s in the hospital, but she’s okay.

“I did not have a lot of hope for some hours,” Stojanović says, “but I have confidence now.” He smiles. “I think she will be just fine.”

She sleeps through the night and Will has fallen asleep with his face pressed into the blankets beside her hip when she stirs again. She touches her fingers to his face and that’s what wakes him.

“Will,” she whispers.

“Yeah?”

“You look like shit.”

He laughs and presses his forehead to her knuckles. “Well you look great,” he says with a smile.

“I like this scruff,” she says, tapping the tip of her finger to his cheek. “It’s a good look for you.” She pauses a moment to catch her breath. “Very rebellious.”

He smiles. “Haven’t had much time to shave.”

She squints at him. “Someone been keeping you awake?” she jokes.

“You could say that.” He smiles and she smiles back. It’s hardly more than a quirk of her lips but he can read the rest of it in her eyes. 

“I changed my mind,” she says and he’s not sure what she means for a moment. “ _This_ is the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to me.” 

Will laughs and presses his forehead to their clasped hands again as he tries to breathe past the tears that are rapidly collecting.

She looks over at Jai and her brow furrows. “Your suit is all wrinkled.”

“I don’t care,” Jai says.

Will can see the smile in Frankie’s eyes again before she closes them and goes back to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two more chapters now!


	10. Chapter 10

They spend two days keeping shifts in her room. At least, that’s how long Frankie thinks it’s been. She’s on some really nice drugs and can’t seem to stay awake longer than a few minutes at a time. They’ve at least let her keep the mask off, though.

She wakes up and Ray is sitting beside her in the seat Will was in earlier. He, Jai, and Susan are nowhere to be found.

“It’s just me right now,” Ray says. “Susan took them to get real food. They’ve both been living on granola bars for days.” He pauses and considers. “So has Susan.” He thinks again, a little harder, brow creasing. “So have I. Although I did have a slice of pizza from the cafeteria, too. It was disgusting.”

Frankie can’t help but smile a little at that. 

Ray frown. “I know this probably doesn’t mean anything coming from me. But I’m really glad that you’re okay. You had us all really worried.”

She’s surprised to find that it does, in fact, mean something. “Thanks, Ray.”

He nods. “I’ve-- Frankie, I’ve never seen Will like that. He’s… I don’t know. He’s not in a good place. He’s blaming himself.”

She narrows her eyes. “It’s not his fault.”

“I know. But he doesn’t believe me. The only person he’s going to believe is you.”

She nods.

“I just want what’s best for Will, and for you and everyone else. Even if I constantly manage to fuck it up.”

“I know,” she says.

She falls asleep before they can finish the conversation but when she wakes up again Susan is there. 

“Hi,” Frankie says.

“Hey. How are you feeling?”

Frankie thinks for a moment as the haze of sleep clears a bit. “Drugged.”

Susan smiles, but it’s a tired sort of smile. “I have someone who wants to talk to you if you’re up for it,” she says.

“Depends who it is,” Frankie says suspiciously.

Susan pulls out her cellphone and taps through the menus until the call connects. “Hey,” she says, “I got Frankie for you.” She holds the phone out for Frankie. “It’s Standish.”

She takes the phone. “Hey kiddo.”

“Hey,” he says. There’s an awkward pause. “I know you’re, like, probably pretty tired and stuff, but I just wanted to say that I’m really glad you’re okay, and that I’m sorry I’m not there.”

“Thanks,” Frankie says, and actually means it. “And don’t apologize; the job comes first. You’re doing exactly what you should be doing.”

“Yeah,” Standish says, but it sounds dissatisfied. “Anyway, I just thought I should, you know, give you a heads up that you’ll get a hug from me when you’re home. Because that’s, uh, that’s a thing that’s happening.”

Frankie smiles. “I think we can skip that.”

“No, uh-uh, it’s non-negotiable. So just prepare yourself.” Frankie smiles again and the silence stretches awkwardly between them. “Anyway,” he says.

“Standish?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

“We’re family. That’s what we're here for.” He pauses. “I’ll see you when you get home, Frankie.”

“Okay,” she says. “Bye.”

“Bye.”

She ends the call and hands the phone back to Susan. “He’s been spending too much time with Will,” she says.

Susan laughs but there isn’t a lot of humor in it. She holds her hand out and Frankie takes it. Susan stands from the chair and settles on the bed with her feet on the bottom rail.

“Uh-oh,” Frankie says.

Susan smiles, just a little, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. She holds Frankie’s hand between both of her own. “I need to make sure I am crystal clear about this. We all love you a lot, okay. This was really bad.” Frankie looks away. “Frankie,” Susan insists. She forces herself to make eye contact again. “Will is in a really bad place over this.”

“That’s what Ray said.”

Susan nods. “I know you’re not his biggest fan, but Ray knows Will really well, sweetie.”

“So do you.”

Susan nods. “You’re going to have to talk about this.”

“I don’t want to,” she grouses.

“I know. But he needs this. So do you.” Frankie looks up at the ceiling. “You do and you know it. It’s a conversation that needs to happen.”

“It’s a conversation I’d rather avoid at all costs until we both forget about it,” Frankie says.

“Franks… this isn’t something that’s going to go away.” That gets Frankie’s attention again, enough for her to look at Susan. She may be pretty heavily drugged but she knows Susan’s not just talking about the conversation anymore. “If you ignore it, it’s just going to make things worse.”

Frankie doesn’t have an answer to that and she knows Susan can tell when she slips off the bed and settles back in her chair. 

“He’ll be back in awhile,” she says.

Frankie falls asleep.

Jai is there later and when she blinks him into focus he’s smiling. 

“Well,” he says. “Good morning.”

“It’s morning?”

“Yes. You slept all night.”

“Oh,” she says. Then, after a moment, “I feel awful.”

“Yeah, they backed off some of the drugs.”

“Ugh.”

“Oh, I’m sure.” Jai steeples his fingers. “I’m mad as hell at you.”

Frankie blinks as she processes his words. “What?”

“You didn’t…” Jai takes a breath. “Francesca.” Frankie narrows her eyes at his use of her full name. “You didn't think.”

“Oh, you’ve been talking to Will,” she snaps.

A strange look settles on Jai’s face. He looks almost like he’s been caught red-handed but he also looks angry at the implication. “We got to know each other a little better while you were dying,” he says. It’s not sarcastic, just caustic. She feels shame tighten her throat. “I’m not upset that you saved Will. I know you love him.” She must make a face at that because he says, “I don’t have to be the only person you love, Frankie. We somehow… ended up with this… weird little family. I didn’t want it and neither did you. But, here we are. I know that you’re used to being on your own if I’m not around. Will is your partner. He’s always there; that’s his job. You should’ve told him as soon as you realized you’d been shot.”

“I don’t need to justify myself,” she snaps.

Jai squeezes her hand. “Yes you do. Not to me, though.” She looks at him in confusion. “You’re the most loyal person I know. I have spent… the last several days trying to understand why you hid it. I get it. I’m mad about it, but I get it. Will would’ve had to choose between taking care of you or completing the mission. It could’ve turned into an impossible choice, and you were trying to spare him from that.”

“I was afraid he’d make the wrong choice. My life isn't worth the lives of others.”

“I don’t want to debate morality,” Jai says. “I know you and Will fought about it. And I can’t believe I’m saying this, but… you have to talk to him.”

“Susan told you to talk to me, didn’t she.”

“Yes,” he admits. “But she’s right.” He shakes his head. “God, I can’t believe I let her talk me into anything.”

“She’s good at what she does.”

“Yes, she is. So good.” He pats her hand.

“I’m sorry I worried you,” she says, looking up at him.

“Don’t… no, don’t do the puppy dog eyes. Let me be mad.”

Frankie smiles. “Okay.”

“I’ll let you know when I’m not mad anymore.”

“I know you will.”

“It’ll be awhile.”

“I know.” 

She falls asleep to the sound of Jai tapping on his tablet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 👀 @ Scott Foley's beard
> 
> Don't do this to me.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we are. The final chapter.

When she wakes again Will is asleep, snoring with his face pressed into the blankets. He’s got a grip on her hand just like he has every time she’s woken up with him here.

She feels like hell but seeing him here eases it away for a moment. She feels like this because she’d saved his life. If she didn’t feel like this it would mean he was gone. She doesn’t want to think about that.

She reaches over even though it hurts so she can run her hand over his hair. 

He lifts his head, blinking in confusion until he realizes she’s awake. He smiles at her then and under any other circumstances she’d die before she admitted that it looks like sunlight scattering the clouds and that she feels like she’s swallowed butterflies. Except she did almost die.

“Have you slept at all?” she asks.

“Yeah,” he says. “Just now.”

She smiles. “Actual sleep.”

“Sure.”

“Will.”

“I’m fine,” he says stiffly and the smile is gone. She just looks evenly at him. “Why is everyone giving me such a hard time,” he snaps. 

She can see the exhaustion on his face and in the lines of his body. He looks unkempt for the first time she’s seen. His shirt and sweatshirt are wrinkled from the way he’d been sleeping and he’s scruffy with days of unshaven beard. It’s a good look for him but he’s so far from the boy scout she’s come to know that it hurts anyway.

She untangles her hand from his and pushes herself over on the bed. She can barely lift herself up enough to scoot sideways; her arms shake with just that little bit of effort. Her side aches and burns and she feels some of the blood drain from her face. 

“Come here,” she snaps.

“What?”

She points at the space now beside her. “You haven’t slept. You’re a liability if you’re not rested.” He looks _pissed_. “Also I’m freezing and intend to steal your body heat.”

He still looks mad but the corner of his mouth twitches upward. He settles beside her on the narrow bed. There isn’t much space; his chest is against her shoulder and she can feel every breath he takes.

She turns her head to look at him and they’re a lot closer than she’d bargained for. 

“I’m not sorry that I lied to you,” she says. He leans back like he’s going to turn over and leave so she fists a hand in his shirt. “You asked me if I’d save your life even if I knew I’d have to give up mine.” He stills. She’s nervous and tries to breathe it away. “I said I didn’t know. But I woke up and found out that I almost died. And I don’t regret it at all.”

“I do,” he says.

“I’d do it again.”

“I don’t want you to.”

“Too bad,” she says. Anger flashes across his face. “I didn’t want you choosing between me and the mission. I didn’t know if it would come to that but I couldn’t take the chance.”

“You asked me if I trusted you with my life,” he says. “And I said I did, because I do. Do you trust me with yours?”

“Yes,” she says, “and that’s why I lied.” She looks at him for a moment, imploring him to understand.

“It’s not like it was a little white lie; you could’ve--” He squeezes his eyes shut and takes a long, shaky breath. She leans to her side even though it hurts and reaches up to slip her hand around the back of his neck, pulling him toward her so she can press her lips to his cheek. She catches the corner of his mouth too at this angle and isn’t sure if she meant to but knows she doesn’t regret it.

She leans away again and he opens his eyes. There’s surprise and wariness in his expression but after a moment he presses his lips to her temple. She closes her eyes and feels his breath gentle on her skin.

“You’re not allowed to leave me like that,” he says. 

She holds up her hand with her pinky out. “You’re not either,” she says. “Partners?”

“Yeah,” he says and that sunlight smile is back as he hooks his pinky with hers. “Partners.”

Frankie lets her hand rest on the sliver of bed between them but Will doesn’t disentangle their pinkies.

He rests his forehead against her temple and falls asleep before she does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that was probably shorter than you hoped as our conclusion, but it is what it is and I liked the way it turned out. I hope you all enjoyed this story and will stick around for more.
> 
> Also, even though you probably weren't wondering, this is related to _Call Me By My Name_. How, you ask? Well, it's peripheral, but we'll see that pinky promise again and it'll be, uh, super important. I didn't link this into the series because it's not in the linear progression, but it'll definitely come up again. Soon. Ish.


End file.
